Shorts

Hors Piste by Leo Brunel, Loris Cavalier, Camille Jalabert & Oscar Malet

Hors Piste by Leo Brunel, Loris Cavalier, Camille Jalabert & Oscar Malet

 Leo Brunel, Loris Cavalier, Camille Jalabert & Oscar Malet, all students of the French École des Nouvelles Images school, decided to do a laugh-out-loud comedy passed on both Alps and a time gone by. Here's the result (which won the BAFTA Student award for Best Animation, and is now Oscar-qualifying).

Here's Salami and Parmesan:

The Idea:

For this film, we all wanted to make a comedy based on dumb characters, that was our starting point! We were also very inspired by the mountains environment because the parents of Oscar and Leo are passionate about alpinism. So, we thought that it could be funny to play with this and bring a foolish rescue team in the danger of high peaks and try to think what could be a classic day for them.  Then we added the wounded guy, the witness and victim of all this goings-on, probably the only person aware of this situation!

Setting: 

For us, placing the film in the 80's was a way to add a funny ambiance to the film, but also something interesting to the look of the characters, the colors and the music of course! We wanted to do a parody of the rescue TV series of this time, like Baywatch, Airwolf or MacGyver. 

Constructing the story:

Basically, we build the base of the story during the first three months. It was really fun to find jokes with our two mains characters, Parmesan & Salami. As our film is mostly about visual, we mainly focused on the storyboard and drew hundreds and hundreds of jokes on post-it before finding the ones you can see in the film today. The process was quite simple, at the beginning we split the storyboard between the four of us, then we took the lead on one sequence each, and after the first pass we switch to another sequence. That way the story kept on evolving throughout the whole year, because we had a new vision on the story and the jokes every time we moved to another part of the film. It was a really interesting way of working!

Collaboration:

As we were only four on the project, we had to be efficient and work on every steps of the film. Oscar, Camille and Leo split the animation between themselves while Loris did all the special effects and lighting. It was really exhausting to work this way because we had to think of literally everything. But at the same time, having a small team was really great! The whole team had the same film in mind, which allowed us to keep the control on the film and the story throughout the entire production.

Film Review (Vassilis Kroustallis):

It takes some energy and courage to use your dumb characters and a purposedly plastic design to make a comedy. The Hors Piste team lovingly re-creates an atmosphere where cellphones did not exist, where bears were still perceived to be a danger for humans (and not the other way round), and where people could be more careless -and still get away with it. Taking inspiration from a menagerie of comedies (including Chaplin's Gold Rush and The Wizard of Oz), it is a fresh and lively chance for uncompromising fun -with a comic timing to envy.

CREDITS
Hors Piste, 2018
Directed by Leo Brunel, Loris Cavalier, Camille Jalabert & Oscar Malet
Original music by Nicolas Peiron

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